Football, Violence and Social Identity As the 1994 World Cup competition in the USA again demonstrates, football is one of the most popular participant and spectator sports around the world. The fortunes of teams can have great significance for the communities they represent at both local and national levels. Social and cultural analysts have only recently started to investigate the wide variety of customs, values and social patterns that surround the game in different societies. This volume contributes to the widening focus of research by presenting new data and explanations of football-related violence. Episodes of violence associated with football are relatively infrequent, but the occasional violent events which attract great media attention have their roots in the rituals of the matches, the loyalties and identities of players and crowds and the wider cultures and politics of the host societies. This book provides a unique cross-national examination of patterns of order and conflict surrounding football matches from this perspective with examples provided by expert contributors from Scotland, England, Norway, the Netherlands, Italy, Argentina and the USA. This book will be of interest to an international readership of informed soccer and sport enthusiasts and students of sport, leisure, society, deviance and culture. Richard Giulianotti, Norman Bonney and Mike Hepworth are respectively Research Assistant, Senior Lecturer and Reader in the Department of Sociology, Aberdeen University, Scotland. Football, Violence and Social Identity Edited by Richard Giulianotti, Norman Bonney and Mike Hepworth London and New York First published 1994 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 1994 selection and editorial matter, Richard Giulianotti, Norman Bonney and Mike Hepworth. Copyright for the individual chapters resides with the contributors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form 01 by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publicalion Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 0-203-63988-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-67392-1 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-09837-8 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-09838-6 (pbk) Contents List of tables vi List of contributors vii Acknowledgements viii 1 Introduction 1 Richard Giulianotti, Norman Bonney and Mike Hepworth 2 Social identity and public order: political and 9 academic discourses on football violence Richard Giulianotti 3 Death and violence in Argentinian football 37 Eduardo P. Archetti and Amilcar G. Romero 4 Italian football fans: culture and organization 71 Alessandro Dal Lago and Rocco De Biasi 5 Football violence: a societal psychological 87 perspective Gerry P.T. Finn 6 The social roots of football hooliganism: a reply to 123 the critics of the ‘Leicester School Eric Dunning 7 An analysis of football crowd safety reports using 153 the McPhail categories Jerry M. Lewis and AnneMarie Scarisbrick-Hauser 8 Football hooliganism in the Netherlands 169 H.H. van der Brug 9 Tackled from behind 191 Gary Armstrong and Dick Hobbs v 10 Taking liberties: Hibs casuals and Scottish law 223 Richard Giulianotti Index 257 Tables 4.1 Socioeconomic status of northern Italy football fans 73 4.2 Social class membership of northern Italy football fans 74 4.3 Social class and club membership of AC Milan and FC 75 Internazionale 7.1 Some elementary forms of collective behaviour-in-common 156 7.2 McPhail categories in inquiry reports 163 7.3 McPhail category frequencies 165 8.1 Dutch professional football first division attendances 170 8.2 The objects of violent spectator behaviour 173 8.3 Educational level of respondents and their fathers 174 8.4 Expectations of incidents at four matches involving the Dutch 177 national team 8.5 Expectations of personal involvement 178 8.6 Scale of media influence on reputation 182 8.7 Scale of media-influenced behaviour of supporters 183 8.8 Incidents in relation to supporters from clubs with and 186 without social programmes Contributors Eduardo P. Archetti, Department of Anthropology, University of Oslo Gary Armstrong, Department of Anthropology, Uni`versity College, London Norman Bonney, Department of Sociology, University of Aberdeen Hans H. van der Brug, Institute of Mass-Communications, University of Amsterdam Alessandro Dal Lago, Department of Sociology, University of Bologna Rocco De Biasi, Department of Sociology, University of Milan Fric Dunning¸ Department of Sociology, University of Leicester Grerry P.T. Finn, Department of Education, University of Strathclyde Richard Giulianotti, Department of Sociology, University of Aberdeen Mike Hepworth, Department of Sociology, University of Aberdeen Dick Hobbs¸ Department of Sociology, University of Durham Jerry M. Lewis, Department of Sociology, Kent State University Amilcar G. Romero, TEA, Buenos Aires AnneMarie Scansbrick-Hauser, Survey Research Center, University of Akron Acknowledgements In putting together this collection, we have enjoyed help and encouragement from a variety of sources. Through its research grant (Award no. R000232910), the ESRC has provided essential financial support for our examination of football fan behaviour, the result of which is this book. We also thank the contributors, as well as all those who attended the Aberdeen University soccer conference in April 1992. Ian Pirie, the University’s Conference Officer, played a big part in getting the gathering kicked-off. The staff and various students of the Department of Sociology and the Research Committee at the University of Aberdeen have maintained a regular and stimulating interest in the football research being undertaken there. Elsewhere, Pierre Lanfranchi, Richard Holt, Ian Taylor, Steve Redhead, Robert Moore and Mike Featherstone have, possibly unwittingly, given helpful advice and assistance on our behalf. At the other side of the research process, the patience, talk and humour of particular supporter groups in Edinburgh and Aberdeen have been equally important. Finally, Chris Rojek’s support at Routledge in seeing through the book from its proposal stage to completion has been vital. Richard Giulianotti Norman Bonney Mike Hepworth Chapter 1 Introduction Richard Giulianotti, Norman Bonney and Mike Hepworth This edited collection is about football fan association and behaviour; more specifically, it is about football fan violence. It explores the inter- relations of participatory and aggressive behaviour, social identity, and the politics of public order and control, within a football context. In contradistinction to Steve Redhead’s (1986) stretched claim, it is not the ‘final football book’ on fan violence or supporter culture generally. Rather, as its various contributors demonstrate, it is part of a series of academic texts exploring football fan culture and experience. In keeping with the overriding theme of these inquiries, our principal concern is with football-related violence. However, its cross-cultural and interdisciplinary themes provide the collection with an appreciably fresh approach to this subject. This collection is the first major English language text to draw together a spectrum of international and methodological perspectives on football fan violence. In doing so, it is situated at the interface of transformations and continuities in football’s contemporary status. Changes relate most notably to its globalization, as the world’s premier spectator sport and cultural form—witnessed not only in the financial promise of the United States hosting the 1994 World Cup Finals, but also at the affective, everyday level, through football followers’ heightened curiosity with, and media consumption of, the game’s interpretation and performance in other nations and continents. A counterpoint to these dynamics is the most palpable, culturally shared experience of football, its public, media and governmental association with varying degrees of partisanship, rivalry and aggression among its spectators. There has been a marked consistency in the academic questions asked of British football hooliganism, pertaining to definition, social ascription and action. Why is it that particular social practices are designated ‘football hooliganism’? Which social groups are identified 2 FOOTBALL, VIOLENCE AND SOCIAL IDENTITY as ‘football hooligans’, and by whom? Where are the clear demarcations or grey areas between particular modes of fan behaviour, in terms of fanaticism, ‘hooliganism’ or generally expressive support? In addition to readdressing these questions, in the light of current political and academic debates on contemporary fan violence, this collection’s distinctively cultural theme introduces a range of underlying, comparative inquiries. What commonalities or differences exist between expressive young supporters in different cultural contexts?